Medical Staff Wellness Program

There are few careers more rewarding - and more challenging - than medicine.

Many of us have become overwhelmed by the complexities of medicine while others may be experiencing increased career related stress. Wherever you may be on the burnout spectrum, these have a negative impact on our health, our relationships and on patient care.

That's why we created the Medical Staff Wellness Program - to help us all prevent burnout, to provide support for those in crisis and to help any provider who may be impaired due to any number of causes.

We have one goal: to develop and maintain a program that is available to help providers deal with the increasing stress in medicine.

Please take some time to explore the information and resources we have compiled for you, as well as the names of professionals available to help when you, a colleague, a co-worker or even a loved one finding themselves at a point of crisis.

Our Promise to You

Our wellness program is organized around three pillars:

1. Stress Management and Burnout Prevention

We all recognize that mounting regulatory requirements decrease efficiency and increase time demands without adding appreciable value to the work of delivering care to our patients. This eats into our personal and family time, and leads to burnout and decreased job satisfaction.

While we don't have any significant control over the regulation, we do have control over working with our organization to meet these requirements as efficiently as possible and learn how to deal with the frustration.

We commit to providing programs designed to help us identify personal stressors and how best to manage them, as well as create forums where we can talk through our frustrations in groups or individually.

2. Crisis Support

No matter how fortunate we've been, some of us are going to experience a monumental crisis, either professional or personal. We are creating processes where medical staff members are available to support and assist any practitioner undergoing a professional crisis such as a poor clinical outcome.

Additionally, we recognize that personal or family crisis will have a negative impact on our ability to practice effectively. We are developing resources for personal or family assistance in these situations.

3. Impaired Practitioners

We have identified four categories of impaired providers, due to:

• Substance abuse
• Mental health issues
• Aging issues
• Unexpected physical impairments

Our commitments in working with impaired providers are outlined below.

For medical staff members:

• Focus on medical staff wellness
• Prevention through education
• Safe and confidential communication
• Honest and factual interventions
• Effective treatment pathways
• Respectful monitoring processes
• Effective support for medical staff leadership committees

For the referring party:

• Commitment to follow through on any referral
• Clear communication on process and disposition of referrals
• Prevention through education

For the organization:

• Improved safety and quality of care delivered to our patients
• Integration with the EvergreenHealth Employee Wellness initiatives
• Effective support for medical staff and administrative leadership committees
• Compliance with regulatory statutes

Wellness Committee Members

Danielle Henderson, DO, Co-Chair | EvergreenHealth OB Hospitalist Group
Allison Overland, MD, Co-Chair | EvergreenHealth Rehabilitation Clinic
Eli Bench, MD | Evergreen Emergency Services
Theodore Brown, MD | EvergreenHealth Multiple Sclerosis Center
Diane Dozois, MD | EvergreenHealth Palliative Medicine
Tempe Evans, PsyD | EvergreenHealth Neuropsychological Services
Raymond Park, MD | EvergreenHealth General Neurology
Marshall Partington, MD | Partington Plastic Surgeons
Terrence Pheifer, MD | EvergreenHealth OB Hospitalist Group
Pratima J. Sharma, MD | EvergreenHealth Internal Medicine + Primary Care
Michael Mena, MD - President Medical Staff | EvergreenHealth Hospitalist Services
Jan Stroh, MD-VP Medical Staff | Matrix Anesthesia, PS
Joy Hanson, Executive Director Care Management | EvergreenHealth
Ettore Palazzo, MD, FACP | Chief Executive Officer, EvergreenHealth
Chris Bredeson | Chief Operating Officer, EvergreenHealth
Jessika Groce | Chief Human Resources Officer, EvergreenHealth